The first St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics
opened in 1751 in an old converted building, the Foundry, in Windmill
Hill, Upper Moorfields, leased from the authorities in the City of
London. It had been founded the previous year by six people - Dr.
Thomas Crowe, a physician; Richard Speed, a druggist of Old Fish
Street; William Prowting, an apothecary of Tower Street; James Sperling
and Thomas Light, two merchants of Mincing Lane; and Francis Magnus.
The group was concerned about the abuse of inmates within the
nearbyBethlehem
Royal Hospital (which by this time was unable to meet the demand
for admissions) and
also perceived a need to distinguish between permanent and
temporary forms of insanity , such as nervous breakdown.

The Hospital took its name from the new
parish of St Luke's. It was the second hospital to be established
especially for the poor mentally ill, the first being the
afore-mentioned Royal Bethlehem Hospital, founded in 1247, and known
familiarly as
'Bedlam'.

By 1753 the Hospital had 57 'curable'
patients (lunatics) and, by
the following year 70, all looked after by a staff of six - the keeper
and his wife and two male and two female attendants. In 1754 the
Hospital began to admit 'incurable' patients.

When the lease of the Foundry was about to
expire, the Hospital Committee found it was unable to renew it on
acceptable terms. Therefore, 3 acres of land in Old Street were
leased
from the Governors of St Bartholomew's Hospital, part of a 6-acre piece
of land containing the Peerless Pool, a swimming bath constructed in
1743. Work began on the new site in 1782.

At the beginning of 1787 the patients were
moved
to the larger, purpose-built Hospital in Old Street, on the northwest
corner of Providence Road. (The building work was not completed
until the following year.) Considered to be one of the finest
buildings in London at that time, it had been made possible by a
generous donation of £30,000 bequeathed by Sir Thomas Clarke, a
former
Master of the Rolls, in his will (the total cost of the building
had been
£55,000).

The interior was less grand. The
patients were housed in single cells, which had no heating. They
slept on wooden bedsteads with loose straw (those considered incurable
were only given straw). Many of the windows were not glazed but
had iron grates, and shutters which were closed at night. The Hospital
had two 'airing yards' - gardens for use as exercise yards - one for
male and one for female inmates. The most dangerous patients were
kept inside the building or locked in their cells. The basement
contained large baths for cold water treatments (they were used until
1856). 'Lunacy' was believed to be a temporary and curable
condition, and treatment consisted of a large cold plunge bath 'to
shake the lunatics out of their insanity'. Restraint was
sometimes used as a punishment to 'encourage' patients to behave in an
orderly manner. Violent patients were often anchored to the wall
by straps
or placed in a strait waistcoat (straitjacket),
but the Hospital had a reputation
for more enlightened and humane treatment of lunatics than other
similar institutions. The only medical treatments were
principally anti-spasmodics, emetics and purgatives.

By 1812 there were 300 patients.

After 1830 attempts were made at
categorization of mental patients, and occupational therapy began to be
provided from 1833. By this time the ratio of patients to staff
was 7:1 and methods of restraint were still employed.

In 1841 the newly established London
Commissioners in Lunacy considered the building unsuitable (similiar
institutions were being moved out into the countryside), but lack of
funds prevented such a move for St Luke's. In 1842 a chapel was
built for the use of the inmates. By 1844 there were 177
patients, 93 of whom were designated 'curable' and 84 'incurable'.
From 1862 the distinction between 'lunacy' and other forms of
insanity ceased to exist and St Luke's Hospital became a mental
hospital in the modern sense.

In 1871 the Hospital Governors debated the
possibility of selling the Old Street site, which had greatly increased
in value, and building a larger, modern hospital outside of London.
Negotiations began with St
Bartholomew's Hospital, who owned the land, concerning
division of the money once the building
had been sold. The negotiations stalled and began again in 1877.

In 1893 the Hospital acquired a second site:
Nether Court at St Lawrence-on-Sea, near Ramsgate. The manor
house in 12 acres of land was leased for the benefit of convalescent
female patients. It could accommodate 15-16 patients and 6 staff,
including the Matron. (The Hospital bought Nether Court in 1901
but sold it in 1921 on grounds of cost).

The protracted negotiations
with St Bartholomew's Hospital over the sale
of the Old Street site began again in 1901 and continued until 1909.

In 1910 the Hospital Governors bought Welders House with its 100 acre
estate on the border of the Chiltern Hills, as well as the 35-acre
Jordans Farm (which was sold the following year to the Society of
Friends), with the intention of building a convalescent home there (the
plan never materialised). From 1911 until 1916 the House was used
for convalescing certified patients, but it was an isolated site with
no transport.

In 1915, during WW1, an unexploded shell from an anti-aircraft gun fell
into a
bedroom at the southern end of the Old Street building, but no-one
was hurt. In 1916 the building was finally sold to the Bank of the
England, with a financial agreement satisfactory to St Bartholomew's
Hospital. (It became the St Luke's Printing Works, printing
banknotes until 1958, when the Works were relocated to Debden in Essex.
From 1920 to 1922 it also housed the Bank's gold smelting
operation. The building was demolished in 1963 to make way for a
shopping
centre).

The second St Luke's Hospital
(Old Street) closed in February 1917 and the 182 patients were
discharged or
transferred to other institutions. While the building was empty,
bombs from a German airship fell through the roof and two storeys.

During the war there was no possibility of
building a third hospital, but the Welders estate continued in use as a
convalescent home for women with mild nervous maladies. In 1917
Welders Orchard (11-3/4 acres) and a field of 6-3/4 acres were
purchased. Welders House was loaned to the War Office in 1918 for
use as a Home of Rest for nurses in the Armed Forces suffering from the
strain of the war.

In 1920 Welders Wood, another 5 acres, was
bought. The House was returned to the Governors of St
Luke's, who reopened it in 1922. It finally closed in 1927 and
remained empty until 1940 when the estate was leased out to a married
couple who wished to make it into a private nursing and convalescent
home. However, the tenants failed to make the business successful
and Welders was leased to the Sisters of the Bon Secours in 1942; it
became a branch of the St Joseph Nursing Home in Beaconsfield until
April 1947. The Governors of St Luke's decided to reopen the
house as a country branch for convalescing patients and those with mild
neuroses, but it was decided to close it again in October 1948.

In 1922 a suggestion that the Foundation
should establish a psychiatric unit in cooperation with a general
hospital led to its funding an out-patient clinic and ward at the Middlesex Hospital.
The clinic treated patients with psychoneurosis, drug or alcohol
addiction, dementia praecox, paranoia and early acute psychosis.
The ward block opened later in the same year, with two 3-bedded
wards, enabling patients with nervous and mental disorders to be
treated in a general hospital. (This arrangement with the
Middlesex Hospital continued until 1938).

In 1928, with the proceeds from the sale of
the Old Street building, the Governors purchased three adjacent
Victorian villas in Woodside Avenue, Muswell Hill. The villas - Norton Lees (bought for
£5000), Roseneath
(£5500) and Lea Wood
(£7500) - occupied a 6-3/4 site near
Highgate Woods and were the only residences in Woodside Avenue.
Their grounds stretched back as far as Grand Avenue. Work
began to convert the site into a 50-bedded hospital for nervous
diseases. Low-level ward blocks (one for 30 female and one for 20
male patients) were built, as well as an administration block and
treatment and kitchen blocks. Norton
Lees was enlarged and became the Nurses' Home.

The status of St Luke's Hospital by the
1930s was complicated and confusing. Although it was named as a
Hospital, it was in fact a charity which owned some property and
supported some institutions. Its properties consisted of the
Welders estate and the Woodside Avenue houses in Muswell Hill.
The institutions it supported were the Woodside Hospital and the
6-bedded ward at the Middlesex Hospital. (The charity's head offices
were at 19 Nottingham Place, W1, from where it also ran a private
nursing service which had begun in 1912. A similiar service was
established also in Leeds, but both closed when the Woodside Hospital
opened).

The third St Luke's Hospital was
officially opened in
November 1930 by Princess
Helena Victoria as the Woodside Nerve Hospital. It had 12
patients
and provided modern methods of treatment for organic nervous and mental
disorders - alcoholism, drug addiction, Meniere's syndrome, cephalalgia
(headaches) and 'senile changes' - as well as functional
syndromes
- anxiety, depression, hysteria, elation, neurasthenia (nervous
breakdowns), paranoia, schizophrenia and psychotic behaviour.

In 1928 another villa - 28 Grand Avenue - was purchased for use as a
Nurses' Home for the night staff.

During WW2 the Hospital was evacuated but in
1940 it became part of the Emergency Medical Service, treating male and
female officers for neuroses and mild psychoses. It was renamed
the St Luke's Woodside Hospital for Functional Nervous Disorders.
In the same year a delayed-action bomb fell on the lawn; the site
was evacuated and it
exploded 8 hours later with no casualties. Lea Wood was enlarged to create
another ward and 28 Grand
Avenue was also used for patients, who received prolonged narcosis
as treatment, as well as narco-analysis. Many of the D-day
casualties suffered from acute exhaustion and anxiety.

In 1945, when it became evident that a
national health service was inevitable and that specialist hospitals
would be linked to teaching hospitals, the Governors sought to
re-establish links with the Middlesex Hospital. In 1948, on
joining the NHS, the Hospital became the St Luke's-Woodside Hospital,
the in-patient branch of the Department of Psychological Medicine of
the Middlesex Hospital.

In 1952 it had 74 beds (7 of which were private). It was enlarged to 100 beds in order to
meet the requirements of teaching hospital status. The
Foundation's funds were transferred to the Middlesex Hospital.

In 1964 the Noel Harris Wing - for acutely
disturbed psychiatric patients - opened and, in 1968, the Simmons
House, for adolescent patients with drug dependency.

In 1974, when the Hospital had 80 beds, it
ceased to be administered by the Middlesex Hospital and
came under the auspices of the North East Thames Regional Health
Authority. In 1982 it transferred to the Bloomsbury District
Health Authority until 1993, when it joined the newly formed
Camden and Islington Community Health Services NHS Trust.

Present status (January 2009)

Since 2002 the Hospital has been
administered by the Camden and Islington Mental Health NHS Trust
(now NHS Foundation Trust).
The Trust plans to close three wards, moving the acute beds from
Haringey to Camden. This has prompted fears that the Hospital
will close, but the Trust stated in January 2009 that 50 beds will
remain on site for residential and rehabilitation services.

Update: January 2011

The Hospital closed in 2010.
The remaining few in-patients had been transferred to a new ward
at St Pancras Hospital in 2009.

Update: March 2013

The 6-acre site has been sold for
£26m to the Hanover
Housing Trust, who plan to build an innovative housing development
of 200 homes, 70% of which will be for people aged over 55 years.

The original site of St Luke's Hospital
in Old Street now contains modern housing and shops.

Welders House (above and below) became a convalescent home for the
Hospital from 1911 until 1927. It was Grade II listed is 1984.

The Administration Block of St
Lukes-Woodside Hospital, built in 1928. It was Grade II listed in
2009.

The main entrance to the Administration
Block.The entry drive to the Hospital.

In January 2002 a 51-year-old unemployed
mechanical engineer, Anthony
Hardy,
had been arrested and admitted to the Hospital for evaluation after he
had poured acid into a neighbour's letterbox. He was assessed by
a panel of health managers as being of low- to medium risk and
released in November. The following month
he murdered two women in Camden Town and
dismembered their bodies with an electric saw.

Following his arrest for the murders a public inquiry was held to
establish why such a potentially dangerous person had been released
from St Luke's-Woodside Hospital.